More Hurricane Dorian Headlines

"As soon as the wind switched for the back half of the storm, though, it's perfect. It's really, really clean lines that are just rifling down the whole beach," surfer Scott Marion said.

Marion considers himself one of the more responsible surfers. He said this is the first time he's been in the water in nearly a week.

"Any average person shouldn't be out trying to surf the last couple of days," he said.

More than two dozen other surfers crowded the water Wednesday now that Hurricane Dorian's close encounter is just about a thing of the past.

One man was injured by his surfboard in an accident, but the waves, though calmer, are still very much a big attraction in the area.

Residents said they didn't know what to expect as weather conditions deteriorated overnight.

"It was pretty mild," Sara Lane said. "We got like a little rain. It was not even bad as some of the rainstorms we get through here most of the time. We had very little wind. Sometimes the gusts would pick up just a little and we would have just steady rain and then it would go away."

As the worst of the hurricane's outer bands brushed by Tuesday night, several thousand people in Brevard County did lose power, but the overall damage was very minimal.

Just a few miles made all the difference between dealing with a disaster or not.

Dorian may have skirted the coast, but it spared this part of the Sunshine State from its wrath.

"The palms that come off the trees were down, but that's about it," Lane said. "And there's really no damage from what I could tell."

Business owners, meanwhile, are happy to get back to normal operations.

"We're in pretty good shape here," John Foy, of The Fat Snook, said. "I just gotta pull the panels off and with the storm away, we'll be open for business at 5:30 as usual."

The Fat Snook has been shut down for days because of the threat posed by Dorian. Pounds of fresh fish went unsold during what is typically a busy Labor Day weekend.

But Foy's not complaining.

"We didn't lose any power here," he said. "A few branches down (and) pretty much that's all I saw up and down here. I think we fared well."